To what extent, in what ways and under what conditions does mothers' employment affect child development? How do the child care arrangements that substitute for maternal care influence child development? This project will use the National Longitudinal Survey's Youth Cohort (1979 through 1986) and interviews with their children in 1986 to investigate these interrelated issues. Our first specific aim is to develop more adequate measures of maternal working conditions using both longitudinal survey and archival data, and more adequate measures of child care arrangements using the longitudinal nature of the data set itself. Our second aim is to construct temporally valid models of these processes by incorporating measures of child care arrangements and maternal working conditions at several points in time. Our third aim is to use the size of the data set to more fully evaluate hypotheses suggesting statistical interaction that have not been adequately evaluated with small samples. The significance of the project lies in its utilization of a new, unique data set that permits parameter estimates of these processes on a national sample of mothers and children, where the sample contains relatively greater variation on key variables than in many prior studies. Our key dependent variables include social and cognitive measures derived from the Achenbach Behavior Problems Index, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Campos Temperament Scale, and for older children, measures derived from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test. Measures of both maternal working conditions and child care arrangements will reflect both quality and stability. We will study 1, 145 three to six year olds interviewed in 1986, where the sample includes all for whom we can verify that reported child care information pertains to the children interviewed and excludes children with disabilities or medical conditions which might constrain child care options. Our initial analyses will estimate a recursive causal model incorporating the key variables plus numerous controls for family economic status, maternal perceptions and actions and maternal background characteristics. Our subsequent analyses will include longitudinal measures of child care arrangements and maternal working conditions within a non- recursive framework estimated using LISREL VI.